Obama Doesn't Rule Out Legal Pathway In Immigration Reform

President Barack Obama is indicating he could be open to immigration legislation that does not include a special pathway to citizenship for the 11 million people already in the U.S. illegally.

In an interview with CNN, Obama reiterated his preference for including a route to citizenship in a comprehensive bill. But he says he doesn't want to prejudge legislation where people get legal status and then go into the regular citizenship process.

"I'm not going to prejudge what gets to my desk," Obama told CNN host Jake Tapper. "I think the principle that we don't want two classes of people in America is a principle that a lot of people agree with, not just me, and not just Democrats."

The president emphasized a series of provisions in existing Senate legislation aimed at advancing serious immigration reform.

"And keep in mind that the Senate bill and the legislation that I've supported already calls for a very long process of earning citizenship," Obama explained. "You had to pay fines. You had to learn English. You had to pay back taxes. And you had to go to the back of the line. And at the end of that, you could get citizenship."

Obama said he would also have to consult immigration advocacy groups and "ordinary folks" to see what they would want in final legislation.

House Republicans released immigration principles Thursday that include legalization, but not a special pathway to citizenship. Obama said he is encouraged that some Republicans appear to want to address immigration issues.

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Immigration reform would reduce the federal deficit by $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years, according to an April analysis by the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank.

Expelling the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States would cost $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years, according to CNBC. That's because it costs the government more than $8,000 to deport each person.

Immigration reform would help bolster Social Security because more legal workers would mean more people contributing payroll taxes to its trust fund, according to an analysis from the Social Security administration. Undocumented workers already contribute $15 billion per year to Social Security.

More than a quarter of technology and engineering firms started between 1995 and 2005 had a foreign-born owner, according to the Washington Post. One of the founders of Yahoo!, Jerry Yang, is an immigrant from Taiwan.

The immigration reform bill proposed by the "gang of eight" senators would save $410 billion over the next decade, according to an analysis from Gordon Gray, the director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. The savings would come largely from a boost in GDP resulting from undocumented immigrants gaining citizenship and in turn likely making more money.

Companies like Microsoft and Google have said that immigration reform would help them by allowing for more H1B visas, a special kind of visa geared toward highly-skilled immigrants. The tech giants say they can't find enough qualified people in the U.S. to fill their staffing needs.

U.S.-born workers see between a 0.1 and 0.6 percent boost in wages on average with an increase in immigration, according to a January report from the Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. That's because immigrant workers bring skills with them that complement those of native-born workers, leading to new jobs.

Immigrants are more than twice as likely than native-born Americans to start new businesses, according to a White House report on immigration reform.

Immigration reform would boost GDP by $1.5 trillion -- or about 1 percent -- over 10 years, according to an estimate from UCLA professor Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda cited by CNBC.

Businesses owned by immigrants created 4.7 million jobs in the U.S. in 2007, according to a White House report on immigration reform.

Though many critics of immigration reform argue against the cost of providing increased public benefits, analysts say higher spending is not a likely consequence. A Congressional Budget Analysis of George W. Bush's 2007 immigration reform proposal found that it would cost the government $23 billion in more public services, but bring in $48 billion in revenue, according to the Washington Post.